optimizing takes forever!

[_Blackdog_]

i now have a 40 gig hard drive and it takes hours to optimize (w/ norton's speed disk) is this normal? i have to leave my computer on overnight to do it

[Bilbo Baggins]

Yeah, the bigger the HDD, the longer it takes to do stuff.

[PabUK]

Yeah it can be very annoying. Defragmenting, formatting and error checking times are all proptional to the size of the HD. Of course capacity is increasing a lot faster than speed so each time you upgrade you will notice how much longer it takes.

[BMWboy]

since i leave my computer on all the time, i've set it to optimize each of my three hard drives every 3 days, and on sunday, my computer rests. since it does it at 5 am, i never have a problem with it.

[mc^^^^]

then again, if you upgrade from a 20gig 5500rpm hard drive to a 40gig 10000rpm hard drive it would be about the same time me beleives

[Rocker]

mmmmmmm seagate cheetah

oh... I already have one of those:p

[apollos]

Can someone please explain what difference the speed of the HDD makes? By that I mean how many revoltions per minute it does.

What advantage does a faster spinning on have than a slower one?
Also, if im talking ahit, please tell me :D
Thanks!

[mc^^^^]

there higher a hard drives rpm means it will be able to find stuff on the hard drive faster, faster rpm = faster seek time. that means it can find the clusters quicker and move them quicker when doing things like defraging.

[dam]

But sometimes slower rpm = longer life.
5,400 rpm disks generally last longer than 7200 rpm ones.

Dosent bother me though.

[BMWboy]

i had a brand-new 7200 rpm HDD, there was a minor defect in the inside of the casing that caused extra friction. the HDD overheated, melted the plastic covering, and seized within 2 min. of startup. at the same time, the cooling fan on the cpu had a bearing seize, and the cpu overheated about 10 sec faster than the HDD. took almost a week to figure out what the hell went wrong